Hoare was disgusted at the whole Fleet St scene,
had the dirt on the whole mob, and would have sung
like a canary at the forthcoming judicial inquiry
-had he survived.

Nick Davies of the Guardian recounts:

Quote:

Explaining why he had spoken out, he told me: "I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation. In the newsroom, you have people being fired, breaking down in tears, hitting the bottle."

He knew this very well, because he was himself a victim of the News of the World. As a showbusiness reporter, he had lived what he was happy to call a privileged life. But the reality had ruined his physical health: "I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars – get drunk with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do. You're in a machine."

While it was happening, he loved it. He came from a working-class background of solid Arsenal supporters, always voted Labour, defined himself specifically as a "clause IV" socialist who still believed in public ownership of the means of production. But, working as a reporter, he suddenly found himself up to his elbows in drugs and delirium.

He rapidly arrived at the Sun's Bizarre column, then run by Coulson. He recalled: "There was a system on the Sun. We broke good stories. I had a good relationship with Andy. He would let me do what I wanted as long as I brought in a story. The brief was, 'I don't give a fuck'."

He was a born reporter. He could always find stories. And, unlike some of his nastier tabloid colleagues, he did not play the bully with his sources. He was naturally a warm, kind man, who could light up a lamp-post with his talk. From Bizarre, he moved to the Sunday People, under Neil Wallis, and then to the News of the World, where Andy Coulson had become deputy editor. And, persistently, he did as he was told and went out on the road with rock stars, befriending them, bingeing with them, pausing only to file his copy.

He made no secret of his massive ingestion of drugs. He told me how he used to start the day with "a rock star's breakfast" – a line of cocaine and a Jack Daniels – usually in the company of a journalist who now occupies a senior position at the Sun. He reckoned he was using three grammes of cocaine a day, spending about £1,000 a week. Plus endless alcohol. Looking back, he could see it had done him enormous damage. But at the time, as he recalled, most of his colleagues were doing it, too.

"Everyone got overconfident. We thought we could do coke, go to Brown's, sit in the Red Room with Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence. Everyone got a bit carried away."

It must have scared the rest of Fleet Street when he started talking – he had bought, sold and snorted cocaine with some of the most powerful names in tabloid journalism. One retains a senior position on the Daily Mirror.

"I last saw him in Little Havana," he recalled, "at three in the morning, on his hands and knees. He had lost his cocaine wrap. I said to him, 'This is not really the behaviour we expect of a senior journalist from a great Labour paper.' He said, 'Have you got any fucking drugs?'"

And the voicemail hacking was all part of the great game. The idea that it was a secret, or the work of some "rogue reporter", had him rocking in his chair: "Everyone was doing it. Everybody got a bit carried away with this power that they had. No one came close to catching us." He would hack messages and delete them so the competition could not hear them, or hack messages and swap them with mates on other papers....

Sean Hoare, a former reporter and onetime close friend of Coulson’s, also
recalled discussing hacking. The two men first worked together at The Sun,
where, Hoare said, he played tape recordings of hacked messages for
Coulson. At News of the World, Hoare said he continued to inform Coulson
of his pursuits. Coulson “actively encouraged me to do it,” Hoare said.

Hoare said he was fired during a period when he was struggling with drugs
and alcohol. He said he was now revealing his own use of the dark arts —
which included breaking into the messages of celebrities like David and
Victoria Beckham — because it was unfair for the paper to pin the blame
solely on [NotW Royal reporter] Goodman. Coulson declined to comment
for this article but has maintained that he was unaware of the hacking.

In recent days Hoare made fresh allegations in the NY Times
and spoke to the Guardian reiterating his assertion that News
of the World reporters could illegally buy the current location
of a target's cellphone by using 'pinging' to triangulate via the
cellphone network:

Quote:

Senior journalists at the News of the World paid police officers to find celebrities or other people they wanted to write about by tracking their mobile phone signal, it was reported on Tuesday.

The technique, which was know as "pinging" in the paper's newsroom, pinpoints handsets by using mobile phone masts to measure the strength of their signal, according to the New York Times.

Its use normally has to be authorised by the police and security forces with the mobile phone networks on a case-by-case basis under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), in which a request signed by a senior police officer is sent to the network authorising the location of the phone.

Using those powers to locate individuals who were not the subject of a police surveillance or serious crime investigation would constitute a breach of Ripa - which was the basis for the jailing of the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman in 2007.

The New York Times quoted an anonymous senior Scotland Yard source who said it could have been carried out for the paper by a senior officer, or a more junior officer who persuaded a higher-ranking colleague to carry out the search on their behalf.

He said it would have constituted a "massive breach" of security.

The New York Times said Sean Hoare, a former reporter at the News of the World, had established the location of a contact in Scotland by using the technique.

Hoare said to the Guardian on Tuesday he had obtained the information through Greg Miskiw, a former news editor ahead of a trip to Scotland.

"If you were told to find someone you could go to the news desk, who would give Greg a piece of paper. Greg would sort it. It would cost £300," he said.

Hoare added "Within 15 minutes or half an hour he'd come back and whack it on the table and say: 'There you go'."

He said that he didn't know exactly how the information was obtained by he suspected it was from police officers.

The New York Times quoted another unnamed former News of the World reporter who told it: "I knew it could be done and that it was done."

"Pinging" uses real-time data from cellphone masts to locate phones. Within each mobile network a handful of people with maximum security clearance are allowed to process Ripa requests, which total about 1,000 across the four networks annually, and are audited annually by the interception of communications commissioner's office. Each of the 56 police forces in the UK will have a similarly small number of people authorised to send Ripa requests to the networks – but that means there are around 200 people who could initiate requests. A source at a UK mobile network told the Guardian that it was "unthinkable" that one of their own team could have run a Ripa-style request without being spotted.

Pinging works on any mobile phone that is switched on, and relies on the fact that every few minutes the phone will try to contact mobile cell masts in the vicinity to determine which offers the best connection, to minimise the power needed when placing or receiving a call. A phone can ping a mast up to 35km away; since 2005, many masts have incorporated software that can calculate the approximate direction of the phone. Given the data from two masts, simple trigonometry will give its location to within a few hundred metres.

However real-time pinging requires access to the phone network's data stream, and is generally only used in terrorist cases or serious criminal investigations....

Well that Daily Mail reporter
sure lucked out when he found
a neighbor of Hoare's!!

Now we can all furged-abou-did because we have it on
good authority that Hoare "wasn't looking in great shape"
and also wasn't "his usual, bubbly, friendly self" - besides
it being "hard to believe half of the things he said."

What do you mean it wasn't a genuine neighbor??!

What do you mean it was a British Intelligence goon hanging
round in the street waiting for reporters to show up --so he
could steer them right on what happened??!

You goddamn conspiracy theorist!_________________Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.

Note also the comments in bold below
and realize how downright dangerous
a bastard he was - from the British
establishment point of view, that is:

Quote:

Speaking to another Guardian journalist last week, Hoare repeatedly
expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism in
general being cleaned up and said he had decided to blow the whistle on
the activities of some of his former News of the World colleagues with
that aim in mind.

He also said he had been injured the previous weekend while taking down
a marquee erected for a children's party. He said he had broken his nose
and badly injured his foot when a relative accidentally struck him with a
heavy pole from the marquee.

It was absurdly easy to murder Dr. David Kelly.
His regular habit of walking through the quiet fields
to nearby Longworth Hill saw to that.

The killer was waiting there, amid the trees near the hilltop. As Kelly arrived he moved into plain sight, pretending to admire the view while reading a map.

He casually asked Dr. Kelly for directions. But once he got close, he sprayed a mist in the scientist's face. Kelly collapsed and was instantly unconscious.

With a fast deft movement, he slit Kelly's left wrist, standing well clear to avoid bloodstains on his own clothing. While the still unconscious Dr. Kelly bled to death, he pressed a packet of Co-proxamol, a prescription painkiller, into Kelly's right hand, then shook it onto the grass nearby.

The tablets were mere window dressing designed to enhance the suicide scenario. As the post mortem would later confirm, Kelly died as a result of the massive hemorrhage.

There was no other choice.

In Washington, Blair had just made a tactical appeal to the judgment of history for his action in invading Iraq, as US politicians cheered him on.

Meanwhile, the BBC Board was living on borrowed time:

"Dr Kelly was supposed to have been the joker in the pack that would end the long-running battle with the BBC. He was supposed to have knocked down Andrew Gilligan’s claims once and for all, allowing Mr Blair to head off to Washington with the affair all but finished."
The Scotsman, 19 July, 2003,
Prime Minister faces his biggest challenge

Kelly was clearly the BBC source for Gilligan's story on the "sexing-up" of evidence of Iraqi WMD. Soon Alistair Campbell would no doubt claim Gilligan exaggerated Kelly's comments and the BBC had backed him in a lie by claiming their source was in the intelligence services.

Tony Blair would then piously condemn sloppy journalism and insist his Iraq dossier was soundly based overall. As he had done in Washington, he would appeal again to the court of history to judge of his actions. The campaign to oust Blair would be over.

Phone-Hacking Scandal Threatens Murdoch Media Empire and British Government

July 18, 2011

British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced plans to hold an emergency session of Parliament on Wednesday to discuss the growing phone-hacking scandal that has threatened Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and rocked the British government.

On Sunday, British detectives arrested Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, on suspicion of intercepting communications and corruption.

Hours later, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson resigned following criticism of the handling by police of the phone hacking scandal.

We speak to Ian Katz, deputy editor of The Guardian, the British newspaper that has broken many of the Murdoch stories, and Sarah Smith, correspondent for Channel 4 News U.K., based in Washington, D.C. [includes rush transcript].

You know you're in the wrong when Porn king Larry Flynt is questioning your morals. But Rupert Murdoch has threatened basic human rights through the phone hacking scandal, according to the Hustler magazine founder.

In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post over the weekend, the adult magazine publisher spoke about how the media mogul pushed his journalists too far and has now jeopardised freedom of speech and privacy in the US.

"If the allegations are true, Murdoch did not just cross the line — he erased it," Flynt wrote regarding claims News Of The World bosses knew the phones of murder victims, 9/11 victims and politicians were being hacked.

"If Murdoch refuses to take his responsibility as a publisher seriously, he threatens not only Americans' right to privacy, but also our basic freedoms."

Flynt is no stranger to controversy. Known as "America's king of porn" he has been advocating free speech for almost 50 years and was left paralysed after an assassination attempt in 1978.

In the 1970s, Hustler was the first adult R-rated magazine to print photos of exposed female genitalia.

Flynt also purchased and published paparazzi photos of former US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which showed her sunbaking naked during a private holiday.

"I test limits by publishing controversial material and paying people who are willing to step forward and expose political hypocrisy."

"Murdoch's minions, on the other hand, pushed limits by allegedly engaging in unethical or criminal activity," he continued.

"He publishes what he wants, apparently regardless of how he gets information and heedless of the responsibility associated with the power he wields."

"No matter how offensive or distasteful some people may find Hustler magazine and my other publications, no one has appeared unwillingly in their pages. I do not create sensationalism at the expense of people living private lives.

"I focus not on those who are innocent, but rather on those who practice the opposite of what they very publicly preach. This may be considered an extreme or controversial practice in getting a story, but it is far from criminal," he continued.

Investors in companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch have been dumping the shares amid fears on both sides of the Atlantic over the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

Shares in broadcaster BSkyB are down 5% in the last week, wiping some £666m off the value of the business, while News Corp had lost 2.6% – slicing some $400m off the value of the News of the World's ultimate parent company.

Many hedge funds which had bought into BSkyB in the hope of making a quick profit from the bid have been selling the shares on fears that the deal now faces substantial delay.

His biographer seems to think public grilling is not his forte.
That he could be unpredictable.
What will be his objectives - shareholders and James?
Why not take out Cameron?
Certainly can't see any reason not to ridicule Blair and Brown and firmly destroy their places in history.

The gold price and CDS spike on the UK are already signalling Cameron's ineffective leadership.

so, er, GO Rupert!

let's not forget the corrupt NOTW/trash media readership who wanted to read the stuff.